I was wondering if anyone knew a Delphi (Or any other good Object Pascal) implementation for OpenBSD? I don't like the language or anything, it's just that a collage course I'm taking uses it, so I'll have to give up the C/ASM side of things for a while.

I'm just on about a compiler or interpreter for it, just so I can execute the code I use for the course... Any ideas?

Delphi was a proprietary commercial product. Borland, (who developed & marketed) has since fallen into obscurity. Because of any number of contractual agreements, most likely it will never resurface. Besides, Pascal programming is no longer in vogue.

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(Or any other good Object Pascal) implementation for OpenBSD?

It is always a good idea to search through the ports collection to answer these types of questions. The following Website makes searching very simple:

Delphi was a proprietary commercial product. Borland, (who developed & marketed) has since fallen into obscurity. Because of any number of contractual agreements, most likely it will never resurface. Besides, Pascal programming is no longer in vogue.

It is always a good idea to search through the ports collection to answer these types of questions. The following Website makes searching very simple:

As I came from a C background, I asked if I could use C++ for the OO aspects, but they insisted on Delphi, despite the fact, as you say, it's pretty dead.

I browsed that site, but since I didn't know the name of any implementation I couldn't perform an effective search.

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Originally Posted by BSDfan666

OpenBSD does not have any ports related to "Pascal" or "Delphi", but FreeBSD has a "Free Pascal" port, and some additional wrapper ports for common libraries.

Perhaps you can create an OpenBSD port by referencing them.

The problem is, I don't actually like Pascal as a language, so I would find it difficult to go through the porting process for a language I don't like, if you get what I mean.

Also, I have zero idea how FreePascal works. Would I be rewriting ASM kernel interrupts to the appropriate OpenBSD ones, or would I be switching FreeBSD-only C functions for OpenBSD ones? Or would it simply be a case of changing the configuration files for a OpenBSD environment? I write pretty portable code, so I seldom have to port things.. so I am inexperienced in the porting area.

...so even if FreePascal would run on OpenBSD, does it emulate enough extensions to satisfy your instructor? More to the point, does it emulate Delphi enough?

These questions may not have answers, or you may find out at the worst moment. My recommendation would be to use the tools that the instructor advocates. Delphi tightly binds Windows UI-isms into the language, & depending upon where the instructor takes the course, trying to stay with OpenBSD may straying too far from his intent.

The BSD family approaches the world from a different standpoint than Linux. OpenBSD uses a different filesystem layout (see the hier(7) manpage...) than Linux, & the system calls & common libraries aren't always the same. This means that some effort has to be typically put into taking code found in the wild to ensure that it runs on OpenBSD as intended. More information can be found in the compat_linux(8) manpage.

A significant number of third-party applications have already been ported to OpenBSD & can be found in the package/ports system official sanctioned & supported by the Project. You will find a significant amount of information in Section 15 of the FAQ:

I don't know anything about Lazarus, nor do I know anything about what effort needs to be expended to port it to OpenBSD. This may be a trivial task; it may be very involved. The point being made here is that you should always check the ports system for an application first given that porting any application to this environment commonly requires more work than a simple recompilation of the application's source base.

Most people who port third-party applications to the OpenBSD environment submit their work to the Project such that it can be included in the sanctioned packages/ports system.

Thanks a lot for the help everyone - I have a Vista machine I use for VS .NET '08, so I'll use that for Delphi.

As it stands, I have been reading Delphi tutorials on the internet, and I am not impressed. Seems like a locked down kiddy environment to me, but I won't judge until I start doing some real work with it. It has inline ASM at least, but it's the Borland syntax, so I'll have to get used to it.

I won't get any extra points for ASM anyway, so I probably won't bother - most people in this class haven't done any programming whatsoever before, so I shouldn't really expect to much of it. I'll just stick by the KISS philosophy on this one

EDIT - I can't see the Thanks button anywhere, so I can't thank anyone - Am I blind or something?

Using the developer edition of Delphi, in a couple of weeks, I wrote a simple accounting package, with foreign currency support, for our Mom and Pop computer parts shop.

Coming from a Forth and assembly background, I was rather impressed with it.

Unfortunately it only worked on Win95 and not Windows 98. So that is the only project I used it for. Well I bought it only for a couple of hundred guilders at a computershow, instead of the +2000 guilders originally price.

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I was forced to learn Delphi and translate C++ code to Delphi and at first didn't really like Delphi. We used Delphi for 8 or 9 years for all or development on Win32. Now I 1 year into the switch from Delphi to C# and that are a few things that I wish C# had that Delphi does.

For RAD Win32, there was nothing better than Delphi, but Delphi has basically been kill off by .Net and Borland is gone. Which for anyone into computing history is sad.

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OpenBSD does not have any ports related to "Pascal" or "Delphi", but FreeBSD has a "Free Pascal" port, and some additional wrapper ports for common libraries.

Perhaps you can create an OpenBSD port by referencing them.

FreePascal is entirely written in Pascal, to build an OpenBSD version you will need to cross-compile it:http://www.freepascal.org/faq.var#FPandGNUPascal
I think that it would be easier to build a port of GNU Pascal (it it written in C) even if it's rather old.

Delphi, C++ Builder and other former Borland products are very much alive and IMHO better than they were with Borland. See http://www.embarcadero.com. If you have to develop for windoze, there is nothing better again IMO.

I am using their new php IDE and I love it. In fact, I just attended a conference here in Phoenix and met one of the old guys from Borland there. I never thought I'd say it because I was a bif Borland fan, but the products are much better off without the Borland baggage.